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Saturday 1 March 2014

A Dual Screen Amiga Set-up

Since purchasing and installing an Indivision AGA MK2 card into my Amiga tower some 18 months ago I've been extremely pleased with it. The image output on my monitor is crisp, I'm able to have a half decent workbench resolution (well, 800 by 600), and the fake scanlines that kick in when running games and demos look pretty realistic.

The only downside to all this is that playing Amiga games on a monitor simply isn't as good as having them up and running on a decent CRT hooked up with an RGB SCART lead. The two issues with running Amiga games on a monitor are that firstly the image doesn't look anywhere near as crisp as it does on a CRT, and secondly, the Indivision and cards like it are trying to take a 50hz signal and convert it into a 60hz one that the PC monitor is happy with. This conversion results in the Amiga's silky smooth scrolling being transformed into a slight chug-fest.

I've been using a Dell monitor with my Amiga for about 18 months. When using dedicated Workbench applications it really is superb, and I guess I'd just been making do with using my monitor for Amiga gaming, too. This changed following my recent viewing of an excellent YouTube video from KookyTech.net. I was nodding along to everything being said.

Here's the video in question;


With the video watched my mind was made up. It was time to give myself a dual screen Amiga setup. A few minutes later and I had the best of both worlds - a Dell monitor for Amiga apps, and a nice 21" Sanyo CRT TV, hooked up with an RGB SCART lead for gaming. The Amiga's connected to the monitor via the Indivision AGA card, and the CRT through the Amiga's monitor port.

Here's how my setup looks;


Don't get me wrong. I think the Indivision is a fantastic piece of kit. The output is easy on the eyes, and if you're using apps for long periods it's a joy to use. For gaming though, the CRT with a decent RGB input is king. It simply cannot be beaten. I think I'll be keeping my Amiga hooked up to two screens from now on.

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